I think the amount of time spent refining a relatively few songs for the soundtrack is part of it’s success. Ian Eisendrath, the executive music producer, said it was the longest film project he worked on. He also said Golden “had five to six songs written for that slot.” Ejae and cowriter Mark Sonnenblick talked about working “nearly five years” on the songs. Composer Daniel Rojas, who brought in Ejae, posted about it being “the longest and most involved project of my career.” Ian was also the vocal producer. He talked about having Ejae record hundreds of times to authentically sound like her voice was breaking. It sounds intense, but it seems like working on this movie helped Ejae discover her ability. Andrew Choi (Jinu’s singing voice) did an interview a few days ago and talked about what an unexpected, crazy experience it was to work with Ian on the songs. Andrew said “I never knew that a single word could be that important…there were just particular words that he had me sing like literally 20, 30, 40 times” (full video here.) Ian gave Andrew detailed directions on what the scene would be like and how to embody the character. It shows the obsessiveness to get the songs to where they are. It’s only 7 original songs in the soundtrack, and a few more short songs that are only in the movie, like Hunter’s Mantra. The time they had to reject earlier versions and refine such a small amount of songs seems impossible in Kpop. I saw that Ejae had posted a picture with an earlier version of Golden with an extra Mira verse (last slide here), and it does seem better without those lyrics. This kind of relentless refinement is like Steve Jobs’ design saying, “there are a thousand nos for every yes.” Meaning instead of trying to do everything, just focus on delivering a few things that are your absolute best, like Apple’s limited line of products. But also exploring and rejecting a lot of ideas. Big 4 sound It’s interesting that KDH has some representation or connection to each company, or its artist. I noticed this when I saw Andrew Choi is still with SM (interview says he taught classes at SM Universe Singapore.) It’s most direct with Twice. Black Label is part owned by YG; despite a minority stake, YG discloses on its own financial statements that it is a controlling authority. KDH has an indirect connection to BTS, with Jenna Andrews and Stephen Kirk behind Butter and Permission to Dance. (Andrews also vocal produced Dynamite.) These two did make entirely different songs, Free and What It Sounds Like, partly from taking advantage of the fluent English of the singers. I also think they did it to show their own lyrical range. submitted by /u/hyeran_jainros_fc [link] [comments]